By Pratheek | 2/9/2022
Manish Shares: Looking at Lendingkart’s journey for the past 5 years, it has grown multi-fold and, overall, we have a great product-market fit, so there is a huge demand. Lendingkart figured out how to lend to customers and MSMEs and which other banks would not. We have been profitable and very close to being profitable now. The deal that we thought about is how to extend the reach that we have already created. Lendingkart is already digital, but we facilitated the business being digital and technology-driven. My question was, how do I create where we are right now and bring in the technology, learning with my background and it penetrates the MSME landscape and going deeply detailed about which MSME and what tenure we should give it to them. What is a risk profile? How do we extend that role? How much should we extend? What are the different data points we should look at? We have no details present, but we can lend to more than thirteen hundred cities. Every single city, ranging from small to micro has been covered. Now, how do we make sure that our customers get even more or how do they come back to Lendingkart for all their financial needs? So, we draw this journey forward and we only focus on MSME, where I think the overall thought process is an inch wide and a mile deep. There is so much to learn and understand in that space. How do I bring technology, data, and product to this and extend that reach into all these different areas is the thought process?
Manish shares: Lendingkart is a complete digital platform and what we have been able to do is reach out to remote areas of India. The customers are creditworthy to be able to provide them with the facility. Most banks and NBFCs are retail-focused, so they lend around the area they have to increase the money market. Now, I think everybody sees the advantages of lending over there. So this platform is built to say we have X number of X million people coming in every month to search for loans in which, some we can serve, some we can’t. How are we sure that we can use the IP that we have created related to scoring? The IP that we have created in extending the reach? The IP that we have created involves engaging the customer through the funnel, where basically everything sort of the customer executes through digitally and how do we extend the IP on the platform to NBFCs or banks, who want to be a part of lending to these MSMEs. Now, we have multiple flavors with those platforms. One is completely API-driven, so the bigger banks connect with their system and the transition can happen. The decision can happen and the entire loan can be served to this, the API-driven model. The other is what we have created is the dashboard; the banks and NBFCs who are not so technology savvy, could use our complete platform or use our portal as their window into what is happening, they could comment, look at the product, approve it, raise the problems, or question on those things. They don’t need to have technology as a part of this ecosystem. The benefits for the banks are they have a target around the quality of loan they want. The segment they distribute the loans to and NBFCs and MSMEs is a big part they wanted to, but they cannot penetrate that part. This is an interesting avenue for them to say, they could be a part of the ecosystem. The customers are already coming on and looking for loans and relying on the IP that we have created on decisions. We could give them a range of NPIs and also a range on what to look at. They can build a business model around how to price this product and restructure it. That is the benefit, for the end customer which is the MSME, they want the best deal. We are trying to figure out how do we marry Lendingkart financially, being one of the NBFCs, or how do we marry all of these different banks.
To find out more, watch the entire podcast here: https://youtu.be/2dWGQN4UIYo
